Oor Wullie Annual 2023

Product Information

People such as Nicola Sturgeon, Ewan McGregor, Andy Murray and Amy Macdonald have appeared in the strip over the years. [8] In December 2016, Nicola Sturgeon featured Oor Wullie on a Christmas card, with the original illustration being auctioned for charity. [11] Gavin Brightwell's history of Dudley Watkins' work". Thatsbraw.co.uk. Archived from the original on 14 May 2009 . Retrieved 21 September 2009. Everybody knows Oor Wullie – Oor Wullie! Your Wullie! A’body’s Wullie! This is the well-known tagline on the cover of every annual collection of the Oor Wullie comic strips. Wullie, the fair-haired eight- or nine-year-old boy who lives in the fictitious Scottish town of Auchenshoogle, is the hero of many hilarious situations, getting into trouble with the authorities as he goes to school or church. With its nostalgic “Scotticized” language – and outfits – one simply must like Wullie. And this is the way it has been now for a remarkably long time.

I myself spent at one point a school year in Great Britain and became fascinated by Oor Wullie. Later, I decided to make it the subject of my PhD thesis. 10 This study, entitled “The Scottishness of Oor Wullie”, looks at a range of questions. It investigates, for example, the dynamics of the stereotypes, along with the linguistic changes and the mechanisms of the great success Oor Wullie has been enjoying now for so many years. Given these premises, the thesis analyses phonological, morpho-syntactic and lexical features in Oor Wullie in the context of the changing topics between 1936 and 2004. Ingvild Haavet Bjørnson, Michty me, whit are ye gassin’ aboot? The use of Scots in the newspaper comic strips The Broons and Oor Wullie. Master Thesis. English Department, University of Bergen, 2009. jing, n.2’, Oxford English Dictionary https://www.oed.com/view/Entry/101330?redirectedFrom=by+jing#eid40391321 (Consulted 19 October 2020). Oor Wullie, in The Sunday Post. Dundee: D. C. Thomson. Issues of 8 March 1936, 15 March 1936, 22 March 1936, 20 February 1944.

Our Bestselling Annuals

With time, the Scottishness of Oor Wullie so very prominent in the earlier issues has been toned down in the more recent issues. This, however, does not mean that Oor Wullie has become less interesting or that it is not just as playful today – with new digital means of communication. When clashing with his parents, the local policeman, or bullies in his neighborhood, Wullie roguishly and famously exclaims “We never get ony fun here”. The very first comic strips begin and end with this saying. And whenever readers come across this phrase, they know: Wullie is about to do some mischief! But what is this ony about?

All in all, the expressions jings, crivvens and Help ma Boab are true landmarks in Oor Wullie, linguistically and culturally. In a corpus of 224 comic strips, jings is the most often used of the three. Jings shows a clear increase in use in the 1980s. It was then that the editors of the comics apparently felt obliged to increase somewhat the Scottishness in these stories. Not only was the language made to sound more Scottish (by using older expressions less common today); certain components were also added that were seen as typically Scottish. Now Wullie had a West Highland Terrier; he went hiking in the Highlands, and often attended traditional Scottish celebrations. This publishing policy, however, was changed in the late 1990s, as the Oor Wullie editors seem to have felt that this strategy was focusing too much on traditional Scottish symbols. In an attempt to attract more younger readers, the Scottish English was now slightly diluted. Oor Wullie in the digital age Following the 80th anniversary in 2016, additional annuals of Oor Wullie were issued for 2016 and 2018, breaking from the biennial pattern. What are the most visible features of Scottishness in terms of language in Oor Wullie and how are they changing over time? “We never get ony fun here”Axel Koehler, ‘Patricians, Politics and Porridge Olympics – the Scottish Highland Games and the Swiss Unspunnen Festival and the Idea of the Noble Savage’ (p. 33), in International Journal of Ethnosport and Traditional Games, (1)(2019), 32–59. jingo, A. int. and n.’ , Oxford English Dictionary https://www.oed.com/view/Entry/101343?redirectedFrom=by+jingo#eid40393170(Consulted 19 October 2020). Nowadays, the use of this word has become obsolete in English. However, jings or by jings is occasionally still in use in Scots and Scottish English. In its first recorded usage, by jing was shown to have been a swear word. The expression by jing was, for example, included in the poem “Halloween” by Robert Burns from 1785. 22 Similar occurrences of jings have also been noted in Australian English, even today. The Macquarie Dictionary defines jings as “A remark or whinge of derision when one is told one cannot have what one wants (i.e., go to the pictures, swimming, have money etc.): Jings! Also, jingies” – this is exactly the meaning evident in Oor Wullie.” 23

jing, n.’, Scottish National Dictionary, Dictionary of the Scots Language, https://dsl.ac.uk/entry/snd/jing_n1 (Consulted 19 October 2020). Stringer, Lew (1 November 2016). "BLIMEY! The Blog of British Comics: Diego on the Post". BLIMEY! The Blog of British Comics . Retrieved 31 October 2021. Bjørnson, I. H., Michty me, whit are ye gassin’ aboot? The use of Scots in the newspaper comic strips The Broons and Oor Wullie. Master Thesis. English Department, University of Bergen, 2009. jingoism’, Oxford Reference https://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803100020889 (Consulted 19 October 2020).

More in Offers

crivens, int.’ Oxford English Dictionary https://www.oed.com/view/Entry/44613?redirectedFrom=crivens#eid (Consulted 19 October 2020). A facsimile of the first The Broons annual was released on 25 November 2006 and of the first Oor Wullie annual the following year, celebrating the 70th anniversary of the strip. a b "Oor Wullie marks 80 years since first appearance in The Sunday Post". The Sunday Post. 8 March 2016 . Retrieved 27 October 2021.

Although Wullie's hometown was unnamed in the original Watkins strips, it has been called Auchenshoogle since the late 1990s. [7] The first Oor Wullie comic strip was published in the Sunday Post on March 8, 1936. Since then, these comics have been printed every weekend as part of the Sunday Post’s Fun Section and again at the end of the year in annuals. From 1940 to 2015, these were published every other year, alternating with The Broons, a comic strip about a Scottish family, and in Special Collections that come out every few years. Fortunately, as its consistently large readership would put it, since 2015 the annuals have been published every year.Sandy Hobbs, ‘Oor Wullie Goes to School: A First Look’. Microfilm. Paisley Coll. of Technology, Renfrewshire (Scotland). Dept. of Applied Social Studies, 1987. Michael Stubbs, ‘Society, Education and Language: The last 2,000 (and the next 20?) years of language teaching’ (p. 3), in Change and Continuity in Applied Linguistics, edited by Hugh Trappes-Lomax (Clevedon: BAAL and Multilingual Matters, 2000), pp. 15–34. John Corbett, Language and Scottish Literature (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1997), p. 188.